Guild Wars 2

I haven’t been able to play since the patch, but I’m assuming the passive doesn’t activate on condition damage, maybe it should.

This would provide potentially small hits for it to generate a stronger effect in certain circumstances.

It would fit the general theme of the class, focusing on conditions.

It would promote intelligent game play, by rewarding intentionally avoid applying conditions on people using vs.

It would provide more use for our corruption skills.

xev.9476:

Wtf makes people here think that just changing the trait to immunity to condition damage will solve the problem? Wow! So instead of pressuring or defeating a condi immune build we can instead chill or cripple them to potentially, and only very slightly, delay our demise. Oh boy! The problem isn’t just immunity to our cc, but also our damage.

I’m guessing those are power necros that feel it’s fine for diamond skin to completely shut down condition necros as long as they can still use their CC.

XII.9401:

Gotta love GS wars in group fights because they run off and leave the rest of the their team to pick off and when they come back..all their timers are off and we pick them off. Bad GS wars, that is. When you use gs3+5 to run..it takes time to walk back to the fight.

Running away and leaving your team isn’t that productive. You are supposed to stay and pump aoe stuns every 7 secs.

I only watched a few secs of the video, but I run a GS/Hammer build in wvw and I think you are vastly discounting the value of “running away”.

In many large fight stand-off situations being able to push in (even though you’re rushing into clusters of ten other players) and disrupt their back line is immensely valuable. Now those people are having to dodge, blow stunbreakers, and try to deal with you. This is valuable time that your back line (and other melee) has to happily bash on them without retribution and push forward.

Being able to engage that many (and the goal is to attack the center of the most concentrated group to disrupt as many as possible) and survive to do it again is one of the prime tools to sway the tide in those types of engagements.

Perhaps it isn’t your desired play style, and that’s fine. It is an extremely potent tool in certain scenarios, and very strong in most others. Sit in the back and shoot your longbow in the big fights, some of us love jumping dead into the center of the enemy and watching them scatter.

PizzaSHARK.2741:

Haha, engi will probably be the class I try next

It’s not a melee weapon anymore than a shotgun is, though. How would a rifle’s bullet become stronger the farther it goes from the muzzle? Bullets lose velocity over time, if anything, they’d be weaker from far away, not stronger.

There are any number of rationalizations that can be made for a ranged weapon doing more damage at range. Off the top of my head, a rifle (especially with a scope) is far less accurate against close erratic targets. Since there is no mechanic for miss percentage, you could say that the reduced damage with lack of distance is meant to model the average damage reduction due to inaccuracy.

Pragmatically though, it’s the way it is simply from a game design standpoint. They likely wanted to add more incentive to using melee weapons when close. If the design was inverted you’d likely have rifle warriors shooting people from minimal distance in order to maximize damage.

Larynx.2453:

Berserker Stance is more useful than Signet of Stamina.

I’ve been trying to decide between Signet of Stamina and Berserker Stance myself. I used to run zerk stance but more and more I’ve been running sos. Between EP and balanced stance I have enough stunbreaks, and I’d always find myself waiting for the right time to pop zerker due to its longish cd.

I’m finding I like having the additional endurance regen and being able to drop all the conditions on me for those “oh crap” moments.

They’re both very useful and I think it depends on build, playstyle, and what other utils you run.

Today I noticed that the buff doesn’t just block his projectiles, it actually reflects them. For me, each one was hitting for over 2k (noncrit, and they can crit). Standing right under him, I managed to reflect 5-8 at a time. This is a lot of additional damage.

So when people ignore the candy pools, they do about half normal damage, they don’t reflect the projectiles for another significant source of damage, and they spend a lot of time downed/dead doing no damage and reducing the damage of other people who then revive them.

This is why he seems to take a long time, it’s the cumulative effect of these factors all stemming from people ignoring the fight’s mechanic.

Vick.6805:

The candy goo doesn’t seem to occur as often as the aoe, although admittedly, much of the problem is that people don’t understand the mechanic.

The candy pools always precede his AOE projectile attack. Sometimes they’ll spawn one right below him, sometimes four spread out a bit, but always before his AOE projectiles.

nicknamenick.2437:

Yeah.. not really fan of weapon swap sigils.. they have long cooldowns (this one is 9sec) so for 9 sec you cant use any other sigil (not even on your second weapon)

I run GS/Hammer and had a sigil of fire on my GS, but the on crit proc was interfering with hydromancy, so I replaced it with bloodlust and now every 10 secs is AE chill (Fast Hands).

I was a bit hesitant to drop fire at first, but a reliable PBAE chill on such a short cooldown is really very nice.

I dropped it and replaced it with hydromancy (which I always felt was a fairly under appreciated sigil).

Considering the recent spike in prices for sigil of hydromancy, I’m guessing I’m not the only one switching to it.

Also noticed tonight that while candy coated you do normal damage to him (without it you do significantly less).

He doesn’t take nearly as long if enough people are getting coated since they’re doing more damage and there are less people to revive.

His mechanic is very simple, when you see the pools of candy, stand in them to get candy coated, his projectiles won’t affect you if you are.

Stand in the pool of candy, let it get to 8-9 stacks (at 10 it’ll knock you down), and then watch as everyone else is downed and knocked about.

With the above and moving out of the red circles, you should take minimal damage during the fight.

I agree that the majority of hammer models in this game are, shall we say, unsatisfying.

Most share a common problem, the head is simply too thin.

As a developer, I’m guessing that there were some stringent model dimension constraints specified to avoid excessive clipping issues and other animation and model interaction issues.

There is probably a way to tweak things for a particular model (which I’d speculate is why not all hammers suffer from this problem), but in order to minimize per-model adjustments most hammers adhere to the constraints.

It’s interesting. Especially for ZvZ in WvW.

Switch Imbued Diversion for Illusionary Persona and your diversion is now AE (and the description says “large area”, though I have no idea how large that may be).

Add in some combination of Illusionary Wave, Chaos Storm, Temporal Curtain, Magic Bullet, and a couple of utilities and there is definitely some potential there for significant interrupt based damage.

I’ll have to play with it next time there’s some good ZvZ action going on, but I have a feeling that I’ll still prefer Illuionsary Persona and 20% MW damage in general.

Greatsword is an amazing mesmer weapon, easily my favorite.

The auto-attack does instant damage from 1200 range, and it hits nice and hard.

Berserker > Mirror Blade > Auto-Attack > Shatter can down a glassy target from 1200 range sometimes before they can even react.

It also has a 1200 range cripple, a cone knockback and a boon remover. It creates it’s phantasm and clones right next to your target which synergizes quite nicely with shatters.

While the auto attack damage falls off significantly the closer you are, mirror blade’s damage drastically increases the closer you are (in a 1v1 anyhow).

About the only thing GS needs in my opinion is a bit of tweaking on mind stab. It’s not a bad ability, but the radius could be a bit larger, maybe remove two boons instead of one, or a cool down reduction. A small buff to mind stab and I think the weapon would be perfect.

Hey guys, good info, but I need to point out that you’re not answering his question.

He’s asking about shattered conditions, not the boon removal trait, shattered concentration.

I don’t have much experience with either, so hopefully someone with more will chime in.

Osicat.4139:

Haha Defcon, idd, or do a portal stomp in the middle of ppl and se the reaction. Best thing ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svvbTHeDcOE

/Osicat

Cool vid, ty.

I really need to play with portal more, so much potential there. What I wouldn’t give for one more utility slot!

I love the large wvw battles, just before the two forces collide, when they’re standing just out of range of one another. I move a bit closer, as does someone on the other side (usually a ranger).

They inch closer, contemplating their attack I suppose. Out of nowhere, berserker slams him from the side, mirror blade hammers him hard and frickken lasers follows up the barrage.

Then it happens, that one beautiful moment when they realize their health is all but gone and that sudden panicked survival instinct kicks in. They turn and try to run, except they still have a touch of crippled left, and my illusions are already racing towards them.

Also, distortion stomping in the middle of 30 enemy, then decoy and blink away. That never gets old.

Condition removal can definitely be a bit of a achilles’ heel. It basically boils down to dedicating a utility slot for it. The options are as follows:

Mantra of Resolve – Solid defensive utility, needs to be precasted like any other mantra, but then gives you 2 instant cast removals of 2 conditions. Fairly short CD at 20 secs. The only mantra I personally ever use.

Arcane Thievery – Gives 3 of your conditions to an enemy and steals 3 of their boons. Powerful utility, but has some drawbacks along with the hefty 45 sec CD. You need an enemy to cast it on and they have to be in range. If they break los, run out of range or otherwise cause it not to land, it goes on CD and you keep your conditions. Really great in some situations though.

Null Field – AE condition removal and enemy boon strip. Don’t overlook the fact that this is also an ethereal field. If someone is intent on hassling you in melee range and you have a sword or torch, you can give yourself and some/all of your illusions chaos armor as well as deny them their boons and any conditions they might want to put on you. In my experience people instinctively run out of AE circles so I don’t find it overly effective for my playstyle.

Phantasmal Disenchanter – Great utility, low CD. Major caveat that it uses up one of your illusion slots and constrains your ability to shatter. It also has the downside like arcane thievery of needing an enemy target.

The final option is mender’s purity in inspiration. It removes 1 condition every time you cast your heal. Great trait, especially combined with Mirror, but that’s still just 1 condition every 15 secs. You could get by with it, but a condition removal utility is far more reliable.

As a side note, Mirror is an amazing heal, especially when you can overload it with things like Mender’s Purity and Runes of the Centaur.

Vaya.1354:

thanks for the quick reply, but there’s a part that you missed or I didn’t explain in the right way

when you have 3 clones/phantasms, and you summon one more, what happens to the extra one?
does it get shattered and deal damage or it just disappears

Sorry, missed that bit.

When you summon a new illusion (clone or phantasm), it will replace your oldest existing illusion, with the exception that it will only replace a phantasm if you have no clones out.

When an illusion is killed or replaced, it doesn’t shatter and deal damage, only your shatter skills do that.

If you have any traits that work when clones are killed (like dom V, cripple on kill), it will activate when the clone is replaced or killed by an enemy (but not shattered!).

Vaya.1354:

Hi, this might sound a bit nooby, but I’ve just started playing a mesmer and still learning the basics
so I have the trait that gives me one clone on every evade, sometimes i summon a clone while I already have three, does the extra ones damage enemy or they just disappear?

and I’m using zerker amulet, my traits are 30 30 0 0 10, using greatsword and sword/pistol, most my damage comes from mind wrack, opinions on build?

Clones do practically no damage (unless you’re a condition build with a staff, but you’re not), phantasms do damage (Illusionary berserker on your GS, illusionary duelist on your pistol).

It sounds like you want a shatter build if you like to mind wrack, in which case I’d suggest trying a 20/20/0/0/30 build. Get 20% more MW dmg and GS reduc in dom, the clones on dodge in dueling and illusionary persona in illusions.

I’m more of a wvw focus and it sounds like you’re talking pvp, so I’ll let someone with more experience in that area chime in on any pvp specifics.

Good luck!

frans.8092:

Defcon.8509:

If one server only has 10 people on a map, another server shouldn’t be able to run around with 100.

So, you’d punish the active people?

I don’t see it as punishment, moreso as an incentive to spread out amongst servers and even the population.

Consider this:

Under the current system, there is practically no benefit to not moving to servers who have the highest wvw numbers.

When up against servers that can’t compete with their numbers, they roll through the maps, taking whatever objectives they like. This is more wxp, more coin, more karma, more loot bags on a consistent basis. Not to mention less deaths, which equates to less coin lost and the lack of demoralization that occurs from constantly dealing with an opposing force you simply can’t overcome.

Add in the wvw server bonuses (which albeit small, become significant when you consider they’re directly increasing the entire server’s wealth) and there is a lack of pragmatic arguments for playing on anything but one of the top wvw servers.

The current system is seriously flawed, and unless it’s fixed the game will devolve into a handful of active wvw servers with the rest mostly devoid of competitive wvw activity. You could say things are already most of the way to that state.

The solution is simple, keep the numbers balanced.

If one server only has 10 people on a map, another server shouldn’t be able to run around with 100.

It eliminates any possibility of a remotely fair match and demoralizes the server on the wrong end of the numbers game, causing them to not queue as much further exacerbating the problem.

Sayne.5209:

http://i.imgur.com/mLaBfDy.jpg

The real 5 minutes fireworks show of Friday.

Great pic, caught my nekkid asuran bootie right in front! :P

Amazing game this week guys, thanks to everyone.

Draygo.9473:

Defcon.8509:

You really need to be able to reset them.

Make the cost significant, or time based, anything, but they need to be able to be reset.

I have almost 40 and haven’t spent any simply because the selection is permanent. That’s not fun or useful.

Get over yourself and spend the points.

It takes just as much time for you to earn another point as it took to get the previous one.

Except everything isn’t just a point, or even five. Some things are hundreds of points.

This is a time investment of hundreds of hours, for something that is absolutely permanent for no good reason.

What about people who change servers, and their investment into skills are now a total mismatch for the playstyle of their new teammates? Or maybe they just realize that their choices were rather far from ideal after becoming more familiar with the game.

There are any number of scenarios for which the ability to reset these points makes sense, and I’ve heard no reasons as to why they should remain as aeonian as they currently are.

Just because you employ such a laissez-faire approach to your wvw points doesn’t mean everyone does. For some of us, the irreversibility of them is a major deterrent to spending them.

Get over yourself.

You really need to be able to reset them.

Make the cost significant, or time based, anything, but they need to be able to be reset.

I have almost 40 and haven’t spent any simply because the selection is permanent. That’s not fun or useful.

Seriously, thank you.

A tremendous source of frustration is now gone.

And this is exactly why I never do cof p1 speed runs, even though my warrior is fully exo serker and I can do the run with my eyes closed.

It simply isn’t fun, I’d much rather run with a group of whoever needs to go. Sure, sometimes they don’t know what to do, sometimes their dps is seriously under-par, but who cares?

Sure I could make at least double the gold I make now if I joined a p1 speed farm group, but it wouldn’t be worth it. As of now, I run whatever dungeon feels like fun at the moment, maybe kitten kitten around in wvw for awhile, or just visit southsun and my gold count steadily increases at a rate that actually surprises me. And that’s without selling all the crafting mats, lodestones and ectos I accumulate.

If you’re farming, you’re doing it wrong in my opinion, just enjoy the game.

YourOwnFear.2743:

Personally I like to keep my ideas simple because I don’t think Anet is looking to script any big changes to a skill. If my idea doesn’t change the way the trait in place already functions and doesn’t change enough to make it feel mandatory, then its more likely to get looked at by the dev team.

I like your change but there is no way they are going to go that route. Gotta think minimal effort for maximum results when asking for change. Time is money.

Daecello is right on the mark with this one. While it may be a slightly more complicated change, it addresses a number of issues quite elegantly.

It provides a reason to use burst abilities (since currently adrenaline is far more valuable saved than used for burst abilities), which will make the traits that focus on saving adrenaline not as essential, leading to more build diversity. Not to mention the primary focus of delivering more adequate healing in a slightly more active manner.

It’s a win/win/win as far as I can tell and a fairly obvious change. Anet should give it some very serious consideration.